Week 3 Discussion: Policing and Juvenile Justice

TRIALS AND VERDICTS

BY

ASHLEY P CLEMENT

INSTRUCTOR TIMOTHY KELLY

CRJ-101

June 1, 2015

Bartheolomeow Granger who was sentenced to death after a horrific act but his actions that determined his fate is jaw dropping. He was set to attend a Beaumont hearing in which he was accused of indecency with a child. So Granger attended the trial that day but his brother stated that he said before leaving the house that morning, “My head is so messed up, I can't even think straight.” So after ending the trial for the day reports state that Granger went to his vehicle, retrieved a fire arm and proceeded to open fire in the front of the Beaumont courthouse. Reports state that Granger intended target was the alleged child victim in his case. He succeeded by injuring the alleged victim and her mother but he also injured one other person. The sad part is that he also fatally killed a 79 year old woman that was also on the steps of the courthouse at that time. After causes harm he jumped in his vehicle and reports say that he also ran the intended victim over and while fleeing the scene he was shooting while the authorities was trying to disable his vehicle. After their attempt to disable his vehicle Granger escapes on foot and precedes into a RCI building downtown where he takes hostages. The hostages reacted in an awesome way because since he was injured during the fleeing attempt, the hostages were able to overtake him and then after he was taken into custody. The judge quickly revoked bail for his previous case and now he was facing capital murder charges amongst the many other felony charges in which this bond was set at $4 million dollars.

So, the trial is set to begin and it is rumors that the death penalty will be his possible sentence and chances of getting it waived was very unlikely. But before the case was set to start they issued a change of venue or jurisdiction from Jefferson County to Galveston County. The reason for the change of venue was because they didn’t want the grand jury to walk passed the crime scene every day to enter the courthouse and they also felt that Granger wouldn’t receive a fair trial because they would be replaying the event over and over again. The case went underway and one year after the events occurred, he was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in March of 2013. Very sad case for the deceased victim and the three victims, who in which one was already alleged a victim of he’s prior to the massacre that occurred. But thanks to the Court of Appeals who issued justice a fair trial to Granger and went through all the necessary investigation before charging him with capital murder then later on a grand jury deciding he was guilty of all nine felony charges.